Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."

Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.

Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Formerly the director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Project in Northern California, Alexander served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University.

Blog Critics

Reviewed by Phillipe Copeland
on
Jul 26 2011

She has exposed for all to see that racial caste is alive and well in America. If you care even a little about racial justice, The New Jim Crow should be on your bookshelf. It is the most important book you will read this year.

Daily Kos

Reviewed by Themistokles
on
Mar 18 2012

There are substantial elements of truth to her account, but I must agree with Professor Forman that it is missing important elements also...she draws back the curtain on why racial profiling is no longer reported.

Journey With Jesus

on
Feb 16 2016

What we really need is a new public consensus that is compassionate rather than punitive. But it's hard to imagine that will ever happen when so many people benefit from a system that they perceive is much to their own advantage.

Boston Review

Reviewed by James Foreman, Jr.
on
Jan 01 2011

But while these authors show that the analogy has much to recommend it,
is it entirely accurate? And if it’s wrong or incomplete, what does that
mean for how we think about—and think about challenging—mass
incarceration?

International Socialist Review

Reviewed by Leela Yellesetty
on
Sep 01 2010

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, is a must-read for anyone trying to come to grips with the explosive growth of America’s prison population in the past three decades—and how this growth relates to the racial disparity in imprisonment.

Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

Reviewed by Johnna Christian
on
Mar 01 2012

It is troubling to call The New Jim Crow...satisfying, because the message it conveys is so disturbing. Yet, the work is a fine achievement because it forces the reader to view the present alongside an era we thought we left far behind, rendering the devastation of the New Jim Crow.

Joy's Book Blog

Reviewed by Joy Weese Moll
on
Jul 12 2013

Since I’ve read this book, nearly every domestic news story, and the occasional international one, has a new twist or foundation or tone that is invisible to most viewers and, apparently, the reporters, but that I can now see.

The ObamaCrat.com

Reviewed by MR. MILITANT NEGRO
on
Apr 05 2015

Her broader goal is the revamping of the prevailing mentality regarding human rights, equality and equal opportunities in America, to prevent future cyclical recurrence of what she sees as “racial control under changing disguise.”

The Curvature

Reviewed by Cara Kulwicki
on
Dec 06 2011

And yet, this book is still invaluable in what it does accomplish: a vital primer for how racism and white supremacy function at all levels of the criminal justice system...a necessary read for anyone whose vision of social justice hopes to actually address race as a major axis of oppression in the United States.

Friends of Justice

Reviewed by Alan Bean
on
Aug 04 2010

On virtually every page she drives her thinking deeper than previous writers have been willing to go, backing up her conclusions with rock-solid scholarship....If you can only afford to buy one book this year, make it The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.